Writeboard

by Krishna on December 20, 2006

Writeboard is probably the most utterly simple and easy application that I have ever used. Here is what we happened. Someone at work suggested a pot luck lunch and sent around a Word document so that everyone could fill in their food items so that two or more people don’t bring the same stuff. The problem is, of course, all the emails floating around.

So I went to Writeboard, created a new board by filling in just 3 fields (4, if you count the “terms” checkbox”) and hit submit. All I then had to do was send the URL and the password to people. Many of the folks are not very technical, but all of them logged in easily and updated the writeboard.

There was nothing to learn. No confusion. Easy!

I am not suggesting that Writeboard is the greatest software in its field. Obviously it lacks many features like a good WYSIWYG editor, but the point is that for the purpose I was using it, it didn’t need those functions. The functionality matched the requirement perfectly. How often do you see software do that?

So the question is: How do one imitate that? Make the user say “Wow!”, thank you for meeting all their needs and making it a wonderful experience.